400 THE ONOSMAS OF LINNÆUS AND SIBTHORP. 
There is little hope of eliciting more information about Sibthorp’s Onosmas. 
Dr. Druce has most kindly allowed me to examine the few scrappy notes and 
lists that exist at Oxford, with the following scanty result :— 
(1) Among the sheets of pencil sketches of details of plants made by Bauer 
in the field, there is only one, a very slight one, of an Onosma. Tt 
bears no name and is on a sheet of drawings made in Asia ; it seems to 
be part of a plant of the same character as the montanum specimen ; at 
any rate it does not resemble any other species of the * Prodromus.’ 
(2) The names montanum and erectum were not given by Sibthorp himself, 
but by Smith; either because Sibthorp had not named the specimen, or 
because his naming was obviously wrong. The first reason probably 
accounts for montanum ; erectum is certainly due to the second, for in a 
small undated notebook of Sibthorp’s there is the following entry : 
* Onosma simplicissima L. Sp. Pl. 196; Icon propria, Ht. in montibus 
Sphaciæ.? Now there is no doubt that tab. 173 does represent the 
Sphakia plant, and Smith, who had Linnzus's specimen of simplicissima, 
must have seen that it could not be that species. From Smith's label 
on specimen 424, he seems to have taken it at first for O. sericeum Willd. 
and then altered the label to his own new name erectum. 
(3) In the same notebook there is another entry : * Onosma orientalis L. Sp. 
Pl. 196; Icon propria. Ht. in campis prope Byzantium.” This, of course, 
is the species figured in tab. 172 (reaily ©. frutescens), which Smith 
rightfully considered not to be orientalis L. and quite wrongly deter- 
mined as echioides, a determination which would surely have been 
impossible for Sibthorp himself, who had labelled echioides two speci- 
mens, nos. 808 and 809, in Herb. Sherard at Oxford. Both are sine loco, 
but obviously 808 is echioides var. Columne and 809 is helveticum Boiss. 
J 
The long years through which the preparation of the * Flora Greca 
dragged led to the rest of Sibthorp’s papers, including his journals, passing 
from hand to hand ; their ultimate fate is a mystery. It is to be hoped that 
Dr. Druce will some day give a complete account of all the incidents con- 
nected with the publication of the great work. 
